John Dwyer has a surprise for us…while we’ve all been eagerly anticipating the next Oh Sees record, he’s been tirelessly working in his synth laboratory as Damaged Bug and has hand-crafted a followup to 2014’s neon-noir Hubba Bubba that shakes up the snow globe considerably. If Hubba Bubba was a brush with a robotic exoskeleton on deep-space patrol, Cold Hot Plumbs is a visit to the alien world that sent it into the cosmos - lush, textural, psychedelic at times, the songs breathe with a otherworldly sadness and heart, with barbed and sophisticated arrangements flowering in every direction. The vintage-perfect sound palette would be but window dressing if not for the songs themselves, which sound fresh, vital, and above all catchier than the flu. Cold Hot Plumbs is a strange, beautiful, and oddly infectious addition to Mr. Dwyer’s oeuvre, and not one to be missed.
